Composite material skins are conventionally supported by a reinforcing member made from two or more elongated L-shaped structural members each having a pair of legs separated by a rounded bend. L-shaped members are secured to each other with one leg of a member extending along one leg of the other member and the remaining legs projecting away from each other. When a pair of structural members are connected in this manner, a void is formed between the adjacent rounded corners of the combined structural members. This void is typically filled with a fillet and the resulting structure attached to the composite material skin.
As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,559,005 by Gants et al., and assigned to the assignee of the present invention, it is known to form a composite material into a fillet intended to fill the void between two L-shaped structural members when the two structural members have a constant cross section. However, when the size of the void varies along the length of the combined members, the fillet can be too small or too large.
If the fillet is too small, voids will be created between the reinforcing member and the skin, and will result in a weaker reinforcement than intended. If the fillet is too small, the excess fillet material will squeeze out of the gap between the structural members and cause a poor fit between the skin and the supporting member. Either of these problems may cause the reinforced skin part to fail a quality control inspection and waste valuable composite parts.